The present invention relates to a system for designing custom made, formfitting clothing such as bathing suits and a method therefor.
One prior art system utilized a video camera and a recorder (VCR) to record front and side video images of the female person to be fitted with a bathing suit. The operator of the system would select an appropriate video frame by operating the pause or stop button on the VCR. After selecting the video frame, the system would then permit the operator to target a plurality of vertically spaced, left and right point pairs on the displayed video image. Each left and right point was individually identified by the operator. After selection of the plurality of vertically spaced pairs, the computer would measure the distance between these left and right points like an electronic tape measure. For example, the distance between the left and right points on the front view video image might represent the width of the female at, for example, the waistline. The distance between left and right points on the side view video image coplanar with the female bust determines the "depth" of the female at that vertical measuring point. The computer would then utilize an elliptical curve formula and determine the circumference of the female form at the various vertically spaced point pairs. The computer then calculated cloth cutting dimensions for those targeted points and took into account a fixed stretch factor for the fabric. The cloth cutting dimensions were then printed. The operator had the capability of electronically adding designer's notes to this data. The designer's notes were printed along with the cloth cutting dimensions. Importantly, the cloth cutting measurements only referred to the particular left and right pairs of points selected by the operator. In order to produce the custom made bathing suit, a seamstress would read the designer's notes and cloth cutting dimensions, select a standardized style and size pattern and make the customized suit by using the cutting dimensions and estimating a customized suit pattern from the standard pattern. The seamstress would estimate the curves for the customized pattern from the cutting dimensions on the print out.
Another prior art system utilizes a video camera and a computer that freezes a color video image on the computer screen. The customer or person purchasing the custom made bathing suit then works with the operator/designer and a multi-directional cursor or stylus to electronically draw design features on the video image. For example, the multi-directional cursor could be utilized to draw in a ruffle on the frozen image. The video image with its overlaid design option is stored in the computer and finally printed out with electronically input designer's notes.